Schizophrenia day 2

I agree with Katharine in that both of the papers had clear and novel ideas to research but ended up having more questions than answers at the end. Starting with the Burrows et al. paper, I found it curious that the EE KO animals became more hyperactive with the MK-801 administration, since the idea is that there would be less hyperactivity when the animals were brought up in an enriched environment. Other than that confusion, I think that this was a great way of going about schizophrenia, as it was the first paper that looked at environmental influences. Environmental influences are always a factor, especially with something like schizophrenia that has been shown to be prevalent after the mother has taken certain drugs (not necessarily illegal either). It would be interesting to see the effects of the MK-801 on the offspring of the mothers that have exposure. I think the biggest critique I had with the paper was the lack of pictures that were mentioned. It would be interesting to see the changing brain structures since plasticity was mentioned frequently.  

            What I liked about Ayhan et al.’s paper was the use of mutant hDISC1 at various time points through development; I thought it was interesting and definitely showed some promises but like Katharine, I felt that it was hard to apply to a human perspective to every aspect as I am not sure how this could be replicated. I understand that various genes “turn on” at different points throughout development but some of the measures, such as only pre, were hard for me to grasp if that would really happen. Overall though, I felt that the pre+post and the only post were better measures for the applications, since the post seems to be the most relatable with the start of schizophrenia being later in adolescence.